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Star Wars: Nothing But Star Wars


Myrddin

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41 minutes ago, mormont said:

 

But these moments are all mixed up in writing where I would say I found 80% of the decisions to be genuinely baffling. Like, it would have been just as easy to do something that doesn't raise so many questions and inconsistencies as the choices they did make, which just made it harder and harder to accept that this series could possibly fit into canon. (And also that some of the things that happened made any internal sense.) I said this last week, but it looks like the writers went with their first idea every time, and the director went with the first take every time. That's good enough, let's move on. 

Exactly. I’m almost entertaining whether they intentionally starved this series of time and money in order to recapture that plucky A New Hope vibe, hardship breeds creativity or something. I don’t think an episode has gone passed without reading a post here that made me think ‘oh yea, why didn’t they just do that?’ Why did they keep the forest chase when it didn’t advance the plot and looked terrible? Why did they pan out to a wide shot of a laser gate when all it did was demonstrate it was completely useless? Why did they hide Leia in a coat when some speeders just showed up anyway?

I know it’s been mentioned that this was once a movie, and got extended to 6 hours. But is there even a movie’s worth of ideas here?

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The bad writing, the sketchy effects, nonsensical plot and poorly directed action set pieces suggest a project that just needed to be gotten out the door by a deadline rather than something anyone was passionate about making good. 
 

It’s a shame because I’m sure actually some people did care about it being good, but when the pressure is on quality goes out the door 

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Some of the Vader stuff was cool, the final battle was pretty ok, Little Leia grew on me and I can watch McGregor play Obi Wan for hours. He's fantastic. Everything else about this sucked ass. I don't know why i keep going back to this well, its borderline insulting at this point, and yet...there's this irrational hope that lives inside of me which whispers "one day...one day". 

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This might have been a better movie than show, which is sad to admit because I do like the longer (6-10 episode range) format of streaming television. But this story needed less set pieces than was required for six episodes. There was no need to visit a new planet every episode.

This story would've been better if they had compressed episodes 3-5 into a single locale. Instead of dragging Leia along, Kenobi should've smuggled her home after initial rescue and then been the bait to lead the Empire away on the same planet. They could've still kept the initial revelation, 1st duel, Reva's arc, Kenobi reconnecting with the Force, and "final" duel without the hopping about.

While I liked seeing Owen and Beru demonstrate their love for Luke and willingness to die for him, the Reva scene on Tatooine was not needed.

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33 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

While I liked seeing Owen and Beru demonstrate their love for Luke and willingness to die for him, the Reva scene on Tatooine was not needed.

Here, I disagree. I was thinking about this and I'll explain why I think it's necessary.

I've heard it said about superhero comics that they're about literalising your problems, making them into things that you can solve by punching them. It's true of genre more widely, I think. Reva's survivor guilt, trauma and desire for revenge need to be literalised on screen. Reva internally wrestling with the idea of killing Luke as a way of resolving these problems, ultimately deciding on the path of peace and never going to Tattooine, doesn't work. A scene where she fights Owen and Beru and chases Luke before bringing him back and putting aside her lightsaber, that's how you resolve such a storyline in genre TV.  

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@mormont You're right in how the scene played out for Reva's development. I just disliked her having to go to Tatooine to do it. That scene could've been just as powerful with Leia.

Having Reva there messed up the flow of the episode. She was able to leave the other planet, fly to Tattooine, and find Owen, all while Obi-Wan and his rebel friends were being chased by a Star Destroyer. And then Obi-Wan was able to escape, fight Vader, leave that planet and arrive on Tattooine in time for her to walk out of the desert with Luke. 

The whole series feels like it had a solid outline for the character beats/scenes, and they just struggled to string together all the parts in a convincing fashion.

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There's a lot of complaints here (and elsewhere) about how cheap the visual effects looked and the overall lower quality of action and chase scenes. All this didn't bother me too much, aside from the forest chase scene, which was hilarious. I was more let down by some of the writing choices during these action scenes - Darth Vader letting Obi-Wan go in episode 3 because there was a wall of fire between them, right after he'd used the force on Obi-Wan when there was a wall of fire between them. Or the constant use of the "leave them dying instead of checking they're dead" trope.

For the cheapness: I don't think the problem was the budget, just like that wasn't the problem for Wheel of Time. Maybe filming was rushed, who knows. But I think the real problem is that it takes real experience and talent to take these massive budgets and create something convincing out of them. It takes skill to run these massive sci-fi/fantasy shows. I read an interesting article recently about the coveted position of "showrunner." Usually, to become a showrunner, you'd have cut your teeth writing and working on a single show, essentially being mentored into learning about how every aspect of a show works. But there are so many shows out there that need showrunners now, and audience expectations for cinema level quality and spectacle are higher than ever. So you throw these people who are probably talented enough into the showrunning chair long before they're ready with very high expectations, and inevitably, they can't get it together.

 

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1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

It takes skill to run these massive sci-fi/fantasy shows. I read an interesting article recently about the coveted position of "showrunner." Usually, to become a showrunner, you'd have cut your teeth writing and working on a single show, essentially being mentored into learning about how every aspect of a show works.

Seems nowadays like showrunners are just people with connections.

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13 hours ago, RumHam said:

I believe it is about that. But there's still this huge gap in her life between the two animated shows. Then another after Ezra cheats and saves her before she shows up again. I expect flashbacks. I expect Christiansian to show up and say "snips" at least.

Also he could be a force ghost. Maybe they show up how you remember them? It's not like it made sense before.

Yeah, flashbacks and the like are, of course, possible.

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Surprised to see so much dissatisfaction with this series. I thought it was excellent from beginning to end.  Here we are a bunch of game of thrones fans complaining about lightspeed happening at... lightspeed when we sat back watched the future lord of Storm's End run across the entire north and back in a night and eagerly tuned in next week to see what other world breaking creative decisions we'd watch unfold next.

Sure Obi -Wan wasn't perfect, but for a television show on the freakin Disney channel I thought it was as close as one could reasonably expect.  maybe the next Starwars edit they can digitalize in a 'what am I going to have to cut off of you this time, Darth?' before their final duel.

I thought little Leia was great, although when she was first introduced I was a little miffed thinking we were being given baby yoda two but I think the show and the actress handled her very well. I don't have a problem with Leia as a young girl showing signs of being force sensitive. It's not something she would have babbled about in Star Wars, she would have been accustomed to ignoring it and keeping it quiet if it was even relevant anymore in her life as an adult.

Mostly though it was Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christiansen (with a little help from Mr Jones) who made this show. Their final goodbye was chilling and the emotion from Obi-wan was as immediate and palpable as anything I've seen in a star wars flick. Great end to a worthy series. I'd love to see them make another, but maybe wait 10 years or so to do it and set it 5 years after this.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

when we sat back watched the future lord of Storm's End run across the entire north and back in a night and eagerly tuned in next week to see what other world breaking creative decisions we'd watch unfold next.

I think people complained about that much as they complain about the illogical writing in Obi-Wan, so it's not like there was double-standards.

 

3 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

but maybe wait 10 years or so to do it and set it 5 years after this

10 years!? It was hard enough for them to de-age Hayden Christenson here as it is.

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25 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

LOL, just have to add that Vader taking a shuttle to go down to the planet sucked hard. Vader's ship isn't some stupid shuttle.

Do TIE fighters have landing gear?  40 odd years ago on my bedroom floor they were fine to land on those wigs of theirs but do they really do that?  I have to admit I wanted to see the ship that we know as Vader's TIE fighter in that scene too, but given where he was going I didn't think it would have been practical for him to take it.

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2 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I think people complained about that much as they complain about the illogical writing in Obi-Wan, so it's not like there was double-standards.

 

10 years!? It was hard enough for them to de-age Hayden Christenson here as it is.

Well 10 years from now they should have it aced, no?  The show can look forward and get past the flashbacks anyway. I don't think they should return to an Obi-wan/ Vader conflict if they do another series so for my money mr Christenson wouldn't need to be invited.

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2 minutes ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Well 10 years from now they should have it aced, no?  The show can look forward and get past the flashbacks anyway. I don't think they should return to an Obi-wan/ Vader conflict if they do another series so for my money mr Christenson wouldn't need to be invited.

How much is Disney+ stealing from you a month? Ten dollars? In ten years you will have paid 1,200 dollars (assuming no price hikes) for your Obi-Wan sequel show sequel show. 

It's your life and your stolen money, but I'd demand more in my $1,200 story not less. But that's just me.

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45 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

How much is Disney+ stealing from you a month? Ten dollars? In ten years you will have paid 1,200 dollars (assuming no price hikes) for your Obi-Wan sequel show sequel show. 

It's your life and your stolen money, but I'd demand more in my $1,200 story not less. But that's just me.

Stolen money? What are you talking about?  Disney hasn't stolen a thing from me. In fact I find that Disney+ is probably the best value of all the streaming services I own.  Just started watching Hill Street Blues last week. What a show! And I'll always have IASIP in my rotation so I really don't relate to your comment at all.

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1 hour ago, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Surprised to see so much dissatisfaction with this series. I thought it was excellent from beginning to end.  Here we are a bunch of game of thrones fans complaining about lightspeed happening at... lightspeed when we sat back watched the future lord of Storm's End run across the entire north and back in a night and eagerly tuned in next week to see what other world breaking creative decisions we'd watch unfold next

The later seasons of Game of Thrones are subject to almost universal derision.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has a script that somehow surpasses the worst writing of Game of Thrones and is consistently that poor throughout. I stopped at episode 3, but I can't think of a single moment that was remotely clever, and we've exhaustively gone over all the really stupid moments in this thread.

Considering how much hate Game of Thrones gets on this board, I would say Obi-Wan Kenobi gets off quite lightly. There are no torches and pitchforks here. People are either expressing disappointment or saying that while the show may stretch the limits of absolute stupidity achievable on scripted television, nostalgia wins the day for them and they still enjoyed it.

Btw, what do you mean about lightspeed happening at lightspeed? That seems to have no application to Star Wars, where there's not even a suggestion that real world physics plays a part.

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32 minutes ago, IFR said:

The later seasons of Game of Thrones are subject to almost universal derision.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has a script that somehow surpasses the worst writing of Game of Thrones and is consistently that poor throughout. I stopped at episode 3, but I can't think of a single moment that was remotely clever, and we've exhaustively gone over all the really stupid moments in this thread.

Considering how much hate Game of Thrones gets on this board, I would say Obi-Wan Kenobi gets off quite lightly. There are no torches and pitchforks here. People are either expressing disappointment or saying that while the show may stretch the limits of absolute stupidity achievable on scripted television, nostalgia wins the day for them and they still enjoyed it.

Btw, what do you mean about lightspeed happening at lightspeed? That seems to have no application to Star Wars, where there's not even a suggestion that real world physics plays a part.

So you've been exhaustively going over the things you didn't like about a show you've stopped watching 3 weeks after you've stopped watching it?  You're going to give yourself one hell of an ulcer if this is normal behavior for you. 

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